Hey guys,

We're hoping to find some sort of reasonably priced software for building 3D worlds, and have some special needs. We need features similar to what you might see in Crysis or Torque's level editors. Here are some of the things we need:

*Good tools to manipulate terrain and fine tune it

*Ability to paint textures onto terrain with brush
- Not required, but it's a bonus if we can set texture
constraints

*Ability to use "splines" for making roads, rivers, etc

*Ability to export the world into a usable format for engine or even Maya (basically cross-compatible anyway), BUT we need the textures to be exportable as well.

This is what my friend says he needs to effectively build the huge environment for our project. He's used to using things like Crysis, and WED doesn't have those sorts of tools.

He feels "apprehensive" about using 3DGS because WED doesn't have these tools. But what I've noticed is that engine's are a tradeoff, like most things. It seems the engines that have great design tools for artists have a yucky scripting language and limited programming functionality/libraries/etc. Then the ones that are great for us programmers don't have the fancy art tools. Some people even make games with VS C++, so how the hell do they design levels?! Lol!

Hoping someone can point me in the right direction with this. We need to design a *massive* world with lots of detail. I don't know a lot about level design either (he's the expert). Any advice/help much appreciated.